As a follow up from yesterday's blog, Why It's Ideal To List Multiple Potential Bulk Oil Ingredients, today we'll be discussing how to go about the process of qualifying multiple ingredient for your label.

In review, some brands often list multiple ingredients with an "and/or" stipulation. For example, our chips may be made with Canola Oil, Sunflower Oil, and/or Safflower Oil.  The consumer doesn't get to know exactly what they're eating in that particular bag, but they know it will have been made with at least one of those 3 ingredients.  

This decision to list more than one commodity bulk oil ingredient is a strategic business choice.  It helps protect the company in times of commodity market crisis, where one ingredient may be high priced, or even worse, completely unavailable.

Want to do this for your product?  We'll walk you through the steps.

The other day, I sauteed vegetables on my stovetop.  I used Extra Virgin Olive Oil in the pan, and I was in a hurry so I turned the heat up to get the food cooking faster.  Next thing I knew, I got sidetracked and smoke was billowing from the pan.  

How many of you have experienced this before?

This scenario can happen with any oil that you're cooking with, but some are more prone to it than others.  

Why is that?  It has to do with the smoke point of the oil.

Every type of oil has a miximum heat that it can withstand.  After it heats beyond that point, the oil begins to breakdown and smoke begins to waft up.  The hotter it gets, the more it smokes.  

This can also happen in a manufacturing setting-- not just your home kitchen.  If this happens in production, the result is wasted ingredients, a damaged product, and a number of other physical hazards.  

The best way to avoid this situation is to know the smoke point of the oil you're using, and not heat it above that temperature.  Otherwise, you could damage the flavor of your product and get yourself into quite a pickle in the warehouse.

If you're working on a new product which uses olive oil as an ingredient, the first step is to decide what is the best grade to use in your product. 

There are a lot of factors that tie into this final olive oil grade decision-- many little interwebbed strings that connect this decision with the outer-reaches of your business planning.  Choosing a grade is not only an R&D decision; it ties into purchasing, marketing and new business development.  

To make a decision on the grade you'll use, you'll need to ask yourself questions like:

• How much can I pay for this ingredient?  
• Does a particular grade of oil make or break the taste profile for my product?  
• Does our target market prefer that we use a particular grade, like Extra Virgin?  
• Can we afford to factor their opinions in?  Can we afford not to?

Before you get overwhelmed, I'm going to streamline the decision process for you.  Just follow these 3 steps and you'll be well on your way to making a smart decision for your business.

Curious how Extra Virgin Olive Oil is made? Follow this simple production flow diagram below for EVOO.

Sometimes it's hard to know if you've selected the right grade of olive oil.  But most manufacturers and distributors know what traits they need in their product (and therefore in their oil ingredients).  

• Does the flavor need to be light to not overwhelm the other ingredients?
• Does the color need to be light so that it doesn't make your product too dark?
• Do you produce an organic certified product?

Think through product needs (and therefore, your ingredient needs), and use this handy guide below to compare each grade of oil quickly and easily.

The term expeller pressed is becoming more popular in the natural foods industry.  Many oils are now described as expeller pressed and consumers are seeking out these natural options.  

It's not often that olive oil is described as expeller pressed though. But, technically, is it?

We'd like to first clarify what expeller pressed means, how that fits in with olive oil and, then again, how it doesn't.

Quick Tips for purchasers and R&D personnel in the food manufacturing industry.

1. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a natural, fresh olive fruit juice. The taste profile and color can change significantly depending on the olives used, the harvest time, and many more factors.

Have you ever wondered if the color of your olive oil will tell you how good it is? Or hear that Extra Virgin Olive Oil that’s green is better quality than its yellow counterpart?

Make no mistakes, these quality assumptions based on color are unfounded. It’s a myth! You can’t depend on the color of Extra Virgin Olive Oil to indicate how good of a quality it is. Why? We’ll explain.

Keep in mind-- this discussion is looking specifically at Extra Virgin Olive Oil... Not the other grades.

Let's dive in!

As a oil ingredient supplier, we work with many of the top food manufacturers in the natural and specialty foods industry. This gives us unique insight into ingredient trends, to see which oils are most popular, and which are becoming the new rage.

Ten years ago, most food manufacturers used primarily mainstream, conventional oils: peanut, corn, soybean and canola oil. As the natural and specialty food industry has blossomed, there’s been a greater shift towards more health-conscious choices.

Did you know that there is both Organic Extra Virgin and an Organic Virgin Olive Oil? Just like there is a regular Extra Virgin and regular Virgin Olive Oil, each of these oils are also available in an organic version.

Interestingly though, you won’t find Organic Virgin Olive Oil very many places in the US. That’s because there’s not much of it that is produced, nor is it often demanded by customers. It’s just not that readily available. So why is that?

Regular vs. Expeller Pressed vs. Expeller Pressed Non-GMO vs. Organic

Just like olive oil, canola oil comes in a number of different varieties. How the oil is pressed/produced, and what kinds of seeds it comes from are the two major factors that determine what the grade each oil is.

The most common varieties available in the food manufacturing industry are:

• Canola Oil (also known as Regular Canola Oil or Canola Salad Oil)
• Expeller Pressed Canola Oil
• Non-GMO Expeller Pressed Canola Oil
• Organic Canola Oil

Depending on your industry and your price goals, it will be important to make sure you’re sourcing the right kind of Canola Oil for your purposes. Here is a description of how each variety differs from the other. 

Phew!  What a confusing industry olive oil is! There's so many grade names and terms to know, to really understand what you're getting when you buy olive oil. My goal is to spell these out as clearly as possible for you, so that you can get exactly what you're looking for. Today, we’re going to concentrate on Extra Virgin and Virgin Olive Oil.

These two terms, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Virgin Olive Oil are so close to each other. They each describe a particular grade (or quality) of oil. I suppose it's logical that they're so close in name, because the quality of oil is so similar as well.  These grades are more like sisters than distant cousins. Let's discuss the similarities between these two oils first.

If you're sourcing bulk oil, your search will always culminate around what type of oil you decide that you want.  You may be selecting a particular grade of olive oil, or you may decide to go with a different type of oil altogether, like Canola Oil or Safflower Oil. 

If you want to get bulk olive oil prices, "What grade would you like?" will be the first question that your supplier will ask you in return.  Here's some basics about the different grades of olive oil (and other oils) so that you can make educated choices.

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If you go into the grocery store and walk down the olive oil aisle, you're going to find many different names on the bottles.  Names like Pure Olive Oil, Extra Virgin, Virgin Olive Oil and Light Tasting Oil. It’s true, the olive oil industry can be so confusing! Our goal here is to spell out the differences as simply as possible, so that you know what you’re buying.

What do these names on the label actually mean?

The two most common names that you’re going to find on that olive oil bottle from the grocery store will be Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Pure Olive Oil. Most people outside of the industry don't really know this, but these are the names for the different grades of olive oil which correspond to their quality and whether they been refined or not.

Canola and Safflower Oil are often sold as Non-GMO, Expeller Pressed Oils. These are two different traits that are used to describe the oils, but you’ll often find them together. Why is that? Let’s first review what they mean, and then we’ll go into why.

Non-GMO Oils

Non-GMO refers to the fact that the seeds that become the oil are not genetically modified in the growing process. The term GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. When a crop is genetically modified, this means it’s genetic make up has been changed to help it be more resistant the herbicide Roundup and therefore grow more successfully. This is a practice that has become the norm in the US and Canadian farming communities. A non-GMO oil is made from seeds that do not use this practice.